Interview: Alan J. Levi,uncredited director,​"Battlestar Galactica"

From 1975 through 2010, Alan J. Levi directed more than 325 hours of episodes of some of the most enduring and celebrated genre television series ever to air, including The Six Million Man, The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Voyagers!, Airwolf, Miami Vice, Magnum, P.I., Quantum Leap, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, JAG, and NCIS. In 1978, Universal TV asked Alan J. Levi to complete the pilot for Battlestar Galactica, the ambitious and expensive sci-fi series that Universal and ABC hoped would be television’s answer to Star Wars. An edited version of the 1978 pilot Saga of a Star World, which is credited to original director Richard A. Colla, also enjoyed a theatrical release, first overseas in 1978 and then in the United States after the series aired its series finale in 1979. Levi, who did not receive a directing credit for the Battlestar Galactica pilot, would also directed the two-part episode Gun on Ice Planet Zero. With a cast led by Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict, Battlestar Galactica finds the surviving members of 12 human colonies traveling across space in search of Earth while evading the merciless Cylon robot army. Created by Glen A. Larson, Battlestar Galactica lasted one season before receiving a soft relaunch as Galactica 1980 and rebooted in 2004 by producer Ron D. Moore. Other Worlds Austin will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the TV series Battlestar Galactica with a screening of the 1978 theatrical film version of the pilot at 7 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Flix Brewhouse in Round Rock with Levi in attendance. Levi also will host a secret screening of a television episode he directed at 4:50 p.m. Dec. 8, also at the Flix Brewhouse in Round Rock.